


No Lasting Hope

by showgirlsteve



Category: Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Attempted Rape/Non-Con, Character Death, Dark, Gen, Serial Killers, implied - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-12
Updated: 2015-01-12
Packaged: 2018-03-07 06:58:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,544
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3165629
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/showgirlsteve/pseuds/showgirlsteve
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve came out of the ice more damaged than anyone realized.</p>
            </blockquote>





	No Lasting Hope

**Author's Note:**

> There is no lasting hope in violence, only temporary relief from hopelessness.  
> \- Kingman Brewster, Jr.

The doctors at SHIELD want to run more tests. They are worried, they tell Director Fury, about the scans they took while Captain Rogers was still unconscious. His frontal lobe, they say, was most likely injured in his initial crash into the icy waters of the sea. Being frozen may have exacerbated that damage, and they need to be sure.

Yesterday, Director Fury tells them, Captain Rogers threw two agents through a wall two minutes after waking up, because he saw through their attempt to break the news slowly. He was just as quick and strong and smart as history would tell. Fury spoke with the Captain himself, explained what had happened. The man was distraught but understood. He processed everything just fine – no brain damage evident.

The doctors insist. Steve gets a sad look in his eyes, the same look as he had when Fury first told him the year. This time, Fury can tell, he tries to hide it. He isn’t very successful.

Fury reminds the doctors of the Captain’s accelerated healing and tells them the matter is to be dropped.

* * *

 

Steve remembers the crash very vividly. He remembers fighting Schmidt. He remembers making the decision to put the plane in the water. Most of all, he remembers the grief he felt when he talked to Peggy on the radio.

What he doesn’t remember is _why._

* * *

 

The agent who has been assigned to tell him about the atomic bomb tells Steve with her face that he’s supposed to be horrified. Mostly, at first, he is just impressed.

He plays along with what she expects.

* * *

 

Steve’s decision to stay away from the graves of his friends is accepted without much fanfare. There is a certain anger, he’s learning, allowable in grief. He can grit his teeth and destroy a punching bag, and as long as he is careful to tie these times to occasions where someone has mentioned something from his past, he will be left alone.

Peggy Carter is not yet in her grave, and he cannot avoid her forever.

The woman who was once the fiercest agent Steve knew is old and frail now. Her grasp on the present weakens with her bones, but some parts of her mind stay sharp as nails.

The men and women in their dark leather who prowl the halls of SHIELD do not know Steve Rogers. They grew up on tales of Captain America, and expect the man to be different from the legend. They are always somewhat surprised by how earnestly good Steve really appears to be.

Peggy Carter knew Steve Rogers well, and she is not fooled by his USO smile and aw-shucks shrug.

 _You aren’t my Steve,_ she insists. _There is something off,_ and _Who are you, really?_

Steve ducks his head and takes a deep, shuddering breath before he asks the agent assigned to him that day to take him back to where they’ve been keeping him.

 _Isn’t it awful how such an amazing mind could be lost to the ravages of time_ , the agents will say in hushed tones over lunch, _so much that she does not recognize her own lost love?_

* * *

 

Steve remembers the crash very vividly. He remembers fighting Schmidt. He remembers making the decision to put the plane in the water. Most of all, he remembers being angry.

The plane stopped when he hit the water but the anger never did.

* * *

 

Steve destroys more punching bags. He soaks in everything this brave new world has to offer, as much as he can from the confines of a SHIELD facility. Sometimes he can convince a senior agent to sign off on a jaunt in the city outside government walls. He lets them think his discomfort is from the changes all around him, rather than from the people themselves. It’s hard to interact with people who aren’t agents or soldiers. There isn’t a script for Steve to follow.

But he’s learning how to fake it as he goes.

Director Fury finds Steve working on yet another punching bag – he goes through them faster every week. (He isn’t sure how many are the right number, how much longer he can go on pretending this is just grief, but he supposes if it starts to look odd, he’s lost a lot more than most people and has some extra leeway.)

He has a mission for Steve.

They both act as though Steve is reluctant. They both know that he is not.

* * *

 

Steve remembers the crash vividly.  He remembers fighting Schmidt. He remembers making the decision to put the plane in the water. Most of all, he remembers that it _hurt_.

He remembers thinking about Bucky in the moment just before his head made contact with the controls, but for the life of him he can’t remember why.

* * *

 

Agent Phil Coulson, of SHIELD, grew up idolizing Captain America. Most boys his age who wanted to be Cap wanted the superpowers, the costume, the fame.

Phil wanted the _conviction_. He read about tiny Steve Rogers standing up against a bully and wanted to be that for someone else. He devoured interviews with each of the Howling Commandos, marveled at how loyal they were. He wanted to be good enough to earn that trust someday, too. He wished he had a friend close enough to grow up to be his Bucky Barnes.

Phil grows up and gets recruited into SHIELD. He’s hardly a superhero, but he’s managed the best parts anyway. All his childish dreams come true, and now Captain Steve Rogers is right in front of him. The nerdy ten year old in the back of his mind jumps to the surface in a way Phil never usually allows.

Their introduction is much more awkward than Phil intended, but Steve is nice enough about it. Nicer than he needs to be, really.

The Captain smiles at Phil and that part of him that leapt with joy cringes away.

Everything Phil has ever known says that Steve Rogers is a good man. Phil watches him walk onto the Helicarrier and sees the stride of a perfect soldier instead.

* * *

 

Later, the media will call it The Battle of New York. While it’s happening, Steve doesn’t consider a name. All he knows is that he feels alive for the first time since he broke the surface of the ocean.

His shield is an extension of his arm, and he uses it to slice and to bludgeon more than he uses it to block. He is covered in blood that mostly isn’t his, and the blood in his own veins is singing.

It’s loud and violent and beautiful and the ever-present anger in Steve’s mind quiets and stills. He is as energized as he’s ever felt, and as peaceful as he can imagine a person can be.

* * *

 

This feeling doesn’t last for very long.

He wants it _back._

* * *

 

Steve remembers the crash vividly.  He remembers fighting Schmidt. He remembers making the decision to put the plane in the water. Most of all, he remembers how concerned he was about leaving his men behind.

He doesn’t remember _why._

* * *

 

Captain America excuses himself from his new teammates. He is going on a road trip, he explains. He can’t name himself after a whole country if the only bits he’s seen that aren’t New York were hotels and train cars now seventy years out of date.

They tell each other he needs to find himself.

All Steve wants to find is that feeling he had for a fleeting instant during the fight.

* * *

 

By the time Steve hits Chicago, he’s gotten used to playing the hero even in street clothes. There is a night while he is there, like so many nights, that Steve cannot sleep. He slips on the leather gloves he wears to ride and takes his motorcycle away from where he’s bunking for the night. Soon he stumbles across two men who are – well.

The girl can’t be older than 16, and she’s screaming, and Steve knows that the man he used to be would not just walk away. He intervenes, gives the girl a chance to run, tears still streaming down her face. The men are not happy that Steve has interrupted their fun. One of the men comes at Steve with a knife.

Steve blinks and both men are in bloody pieces on the ground. He isn’t breathing any heavier than usual, but his heart is working overtime like it used to, before Erskine’s serum.

He wipes at the blood on his face, making it worse, and knows that this is not the feeling from the battle he’s been chasing.

 _It’s better_.

* * *

 

In the next month Steve kills twice more.

The feeling wears off more quickly each time.

Then Director Fury calls him in.

* * *

 

Steve likes working with the Strike Team. At first they are reserved around him, unsure of where the boundaries lie. They do not get assigned the type of missions that call for a superhero. They’ve worked with Romanoff before, and she doesn’t seem to have limits – she’s an assassin and a spy before she is an Avenger. But this is _Captain America_ , and they police their impulses, stick to the missions as assigned.

With the Captain, they eventually realize, it isn’t that there are no limits.

The man just doesn’t even realize that limits exist.

If Steve were not as strong as he is, he would be a dirty fighter. There is something in him that wants to claw and kick and bite. He kills when he doesn’t need to, and it’s rarely a clean shot.

Brock Rumlow loves him. They are neither of them what the other was expecting. The rest of the team warms up enough to loosen up, but keeps a distance.

Natasha decides to be Steve’s friend. Her Red Room memories whisper about a man just like this one, a man who was a lovely person twisted up into a monster with Brooklyn vowels and his finger forever on the trigger. They are kindred spirits, the Captain and the Widow. Fury sends the both of them to do what needs to be done, but either of them can snap the leash at any time. They are not Fury’s dogs, however much the man thinks he might bring them to heel.

Director Fury knows that Steve Rogers is not the same man as he was before the ice. Captain America was a leader, not a perfect soldier, following orders. In the 21st century Agent Rogers appears to be a man desperate for direction. He is a weapon that Fury can point at a target with accuracy, and Rogers doesn’t care about which direction he’s sent.

Steve and Natasha are not soldiers, but they do not clue Fury in. It amuses them to slip under the radar while they indulge their bloodlust. They are not domesticated. They are wolves with razor teeth and the farmer hands them sheepskins to wear. They return to him with red smiles and he releases them back to the herd.

* * *

 

Steve remembers the crash vividly.  He remembers fighting Schmidt. He remembers making the decision to put the plane in the water. Most of all, he remembers being afraid.

That’s not a feeling he likes to remember.

* * *

 

Steve feels suddenly, oddly territorial when he learns about Project Insight. What an awfully impersonal way to clear your path, he thinks. The shine wore off of superweapons not long after he woke up. It is better, Steve thinks, to be on the ground.

Whatever reaction Fury was expecting, the performance Steve gives is not it. He’s been spending enough time with Steve now that they are both in DC that he is beginning to see the cracks. Not enough to see the rage inside the Captain, just enough to know that something is not quite right.

That can’t go on, Steve decides. But this one needs to look like an accident.

When someone shoots Nick Fury through the walls of his apartment, Steve surges with hot jealousy.

There is a man in a mask who has a metal arm and knows how to throw Captain America’s shield.

For the first time since waking up in this century, Steve _wants_ something that isn’t the end of something else.

* * *

 

They meet in a clash of blood and sparks and metal and it’s the most brilliant thing Steve has ever experienced.

The mask comes off.

“Who the hell is Bucky?”

And Steve is speechless for the first time since he woke up wrong.

* * *

 

Steve remembers the crash vividly.  He remembers fighting Schmidt. He remembers making the decision to put the plane in the water. Most of all, he remembers thinking about Bucky.

He remembers Bucky Barnes, he remembers SteveandBucky, he remembers CapandSarge, he remembers wings on his cowl and Bucky’s jacket.

He remembers being small and Bucky throwing his all behind Steve and his every decision.

He remembers _the little guy from Brooklyn, I’m following him._

He remembers that Bucky would do anything, go anywhere, for Steve.

He also remembers that Steve would do anything for Bucky, though he can’t remember _why._

* * *

 

Captain Rogers convinces the Winter Soldier to come with him. It really isn’t very difficult. The Asset has never been surer of anything as he is about his place being with the man he met on the bridge. He does not question why, and Steve does not offer the information.

The Helicarriers fall, and so does SHIELD. Director Fury is a casualty of the crisis, and so is Deputy Director Hill. Steve grieves publically for both of them.

(His neighbor Sharon is officially a missing person. Natasha gives him a weighted look when he learns this, and he decides not to push.)

* * *

 

Steve Rogers comes out of the ice more damaged than anyone realizes. Natasha Romanoff never shook the Red Room from her bones. They are the both of them vicious in amounts that dwarf any of their enemies. They are wicked and brutal and they wrap themselves in pretty smiles and pointed words and nobody ever suspects.

The Winter Soldier is less subtle. He is also less ferocious in his appetite for death. He acts as an extension of Steve’s will as much as the shield, and with a sniper watching his back, Steve can take his time when he wants to draw out a kill. The other Avengers fuss over his slow, slow recovery, tell Steve at every turn of their support. They are thrilled that he has his best friend back, worried that they are too wrapped up in one another. Bucky Barnes does not regain his memory like they had all hoped, but something in him recognizes Steve as an authority and for now that is enough.

(The Asset asks his handler, one day, about a place called Coney Island. Steve brushes him off and reminds him of the mission at hand.)

* * *

 

Steve remembers the crash vividly.  He remembers fighting Schmidt. He remembers making the decision to put the plane in the water. Most of all, he remembers that he was weak.

He was weak before the serum, and even after, and he was too weak to stop Schmidt without dying himself.

He’s not weak now. He's not ever going to be weak again.

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by and written for [sleepybuckybarnes](http://sleepybuckybarnes.tumblr.com/)
> 
> [Visit me on tumblr!](http://showgirlsteve.tumblr.com/)
> 
>  
> 
> Kudos are great, I love you forever for comments.


End file.
